In planning any calendar printing undertaking, the most obvious fact to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, if your calendar is just not ultimately consumer’s fingers earlier than January 1, 2014, they could already have found an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar needs to be in the user’s arms near the start of college if it is going to be useful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline can give you a superb timeline for your entire challenge.
How are you getting your calendars into the top user’s hands? Are you giving them away? If that’s the case, then it ought to be relatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will have to have calendars in hand. Or possibly you might be mailing them out to your customers or members; in that case you just have to make sure you enable enough time for inserting into envelopes, adding a canopy letter, addressing and mailing. Or think about having the printer or a neighborhood mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it should in all probability be cheaper and simpler for you. Just be sure to discover out from the printer or mailhouse how much additional time they’ll need and factor it in.
If, on the other hand, you propose to print a calendar and promote it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a little more sophisticated. How a lot time you need for sales relies on your gross sales strategy. Are you selling at a local competition or other event? If so, then that provides you a deadline, however needless to say you’ll be better off for those who can promote at multiple occasions, in case attendance or sales at one occasion aren’t what you anticipate. Or possibly you’re having volunteers promote calendars to friends and family or door-to-door. If that’s the case, you need to enable not less than two weeks, and preferably as much as 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own completely different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
When you print a calendar that you just plan to sell, you need to you’ll want to develop and implement a stable advertising plan. Marketing does not have to add to the overall duration of the calendar mission – you may and may begin advertising in the course of the planning and production phases of the project. Nonetheless, when you wait to start advertising and marketing till you could have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit not less than a couple of additional weeks, perhaps more, on your marketing message to reach the supposed audience and encourage them to buy.
The manufacturing part of a calendar printing mission starts whenever you hand off all of the photographs, textual content, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar paintings so that you can approve and then places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure you speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it’s often about three weeks (generally sooner if in case you have a selected deadline). In case you anticipate last-minute changes or additions, or if you’ll be proofing by committee, then it’s best to probably permit just a little further time – perhaps a month in whole – for production.
